knew too much to trust to solitude and silence.
He never ceased to search the forests and thickets on either shore with
his trained eyes. He looked for little things, a bough or a bush that
might bend slightly against the gentle wind that was blowing, or the
faintest glimpse of a feather on a far hill, but he saw nothing that was
not in perfect accord with nature. The boughs and the bushes bent as
they should bend. If his eye found a feather it was on the back of the
scarlet tanager or the blue jay. Before him flowed the river, a sheet of
molten gold in the sun, current meeting boat. All was as it should be.

But Henry continued to watch. He, more than any other, was the eye of
the fleet, will and use helping the gift of nature, and, as he knew,
they had come to depend upon him. He was doing the work expected of him
as well as the work that he loved, and he meant that he should not fail.

The song, mellow, haunting, and full of echoes, went on, now rising in
volume, then falling to a softer note, and then swelling again. They
finished the last verse and bar, and began a new one, tuned to the
stroke of oar and paddle, and the fleet went forward swiftly, smoothly,
apparently in a world that contained only peace.

Jim Hart turned his face to the cooling airs that began to blow a little
stronger. Paul was rapt far away among the rosy clouds of the future.
Shif'less Sol, who held neither oar nor paddle, closed his eyes and
leaned luxuriously against a mast, but Henry sat immovable, watching,
always watching.

The hours, one by one, dropped behind them. The sun swung toward the
zenith and stood poised in the center of the skies, a vast globe of
reddish gold in a circling sea of blue. The light from the high heavens
was so brilliant that Henry could see small objects on either shore,
although they were in the center of a stream, a mile wide. He saw
nothing that did not belong there, but still he watched.

"Noon!" called Adam Colfax. "And we'll land and eat!"

Rowers and paddlers must have food and plenty of it, and there was a
joyous shout as the leader turned the prow of his boat toward a cove in
the northern shore.

"See anything that looks hostile in there, Henry?" asked Adam Colfax.

He spoke rather lightly. Despite his cautious nature and long
experience, he had begun to believe that the danger was small. His was a
powerful party. The Northern Indians would hear of the great defeat
sustained by their Southern bret